This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

With impressive television, movie and Broadway hits to their credit, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are finally making the leap to modern gaming consoles, trying to cement their status as the crossover kings of all media.

Expectations are naturally high for South Park: The Stick of Truth, available for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on Tuesday, which puts the never-aging potty-mouthed denizens of this Colorado town in role-playing game form. Sadly, the game doesn’t quite live up to the promise.

Article Continued Below

The good news is that the best parts about this game are quintessential South Park. Vulgar and puerile, taking aim at all forms of religion, science and political correctness. All of your favourite characters are here, and it succeeds amazingly well as a piece of fan service.

Unfortunately, while there is more than enough here for hardcore fans of the show, The Stick of Truth falls short of some of Parker and Stone’s previous successes, with the satire not quite as biting or relevant as we’ve come to expect. Part of it is inherent in the difficulty in creating a humorous game, which can be marred by the repetitive nature of the medium.

You arrive in the game as the new kid (“Your coming was foretold by Coldwell Banker”), are given the name “Douchebag,” and once you upgrade your skills, you become Sir Douchebag. The kids are engaged in a Live Action Role Playing game, where the goal for all is the titular Stick of Truth.

The best thing you can say is that it feels like a 12-hour episode of the show; even the jokes are ones you may have seen on the series. It is extremely self-referential, and clearly aimed at fans, with an almost greatest-hits trip through some of South Park’s best-known episodes. Aliens, anal probes, meth heads, Canada and much, much more are cheerily skewered in typical South Parkian manner.

It is at times vile, vulgar and exactly what you would expect from South Park. But it also feels as though it is a lot of the show’s bile without the bite. South Park is at its best when it’s got something sharp to satirize, but in this case, the target is videogames in general (and fantasy RPGs in particular), and while there are some cute moments — making fun of quick time events, forcing you to skip Jimmy’s stutters — the humour is never laugh-out-loud.

The game won’t likely convert new fans to the franchise, but for those who can’t get enough of Randy getting brutalized by an alien anal probe (which was censored in some parts of the world), this is the game for you.

Still, while the script mostly works, it is the gameplay that truly disappoints. South Park: The Stick of Truth is an RPG, developed by Obsidian (Neverwinter Knights 2, Fallout: New Vegas), which knows the territory well.

While all the RPG elements are there — plenty of collectibles, abilities, perks and things to upgrade — it feels like it has been dumbed down.

Combat is reminiscent of several Mario handhelds, so it is turn-based and requires mini-quick time events to inflict maximum damage. There is not much variety to it, and once you find what works, you can often use some of the same tactics to repeatedly destroy enemies. On normal settings the game also feels extremely easy. In addition to combat, you can use things in the environment to often thin out the enemies.

I found the combat to be tedious, except for the definitively South Park aspects to it, like summoning a machine-gun-toting Jesus as a hero, or lighting a fart to thin out a wave of enemies before the familiar lightning-strike animation that happens before every battle. Perks are given out as you make more friends in a Facebook-parodying screen.

The graphics resemble South Park’s classic, simplistic two-dimensional animations, and one wonders if this game wouldn’t have better served a previous console generation. The game feels dated in other ways too: it is single-player only, and it’s not available for the newer, next-generation consoles.

Parker and Stone wrote the script for The Stick of Truth, and it is easily the best South Park game ever, and an experience that is true to its source material. The ability to walk around South Park and live in the show’s vulgar humour is the best part of the game. Still, it feels like the humour could have been sharper, and better melded with the gameplay.

Delivered dailyThe Morning Headlines Newsletter

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com